hird person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of
nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with
him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:--he is quite a
third person _singular_ for the nonsense he talks!

So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The
sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was
warm enough to go down-stairs--and I put on my cloak as if I were
going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took
Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant
to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's
ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning
visitors--and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me,
besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees
Cook--_plus_ his regimentals--fresh from the royal presence at St.
James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of
cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be
unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after
another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told
her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the
regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me
by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and '_There_ is
Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I
had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too!
who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have
encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next
moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was
standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely
have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that
room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I
couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had
drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a
minute or two--and the corollary of this interesting history is, that
being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking
'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves
my gigantic strength--now doesn't it?

For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish
as any third person in the world. What do you think?

And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speak